Wrong measurements

Pinkie Pie has been talking about going back to school in the fall.  She is eager to try this out, largely because she wants to spend time with her friends.  She has enjoyed a great many books and shows about high school in her time, and I wonder if she has the wrong idea about what high school entails.

I have grave doubts.  Some of those doubts surround her ability to cope with high school and the workload, as her mental health struggles have made it extremely difficult for her to do the education we are doing at home, and I can't see how she could cope with a full courseload.

My other doubts surround the way school operates in general, particularly the way grades work.  I found a youtube video talking about many of the problems with grades and educational structures and it resonated strongly with me.

The youtuber in question leads off with a story about a kid who gets straight As but who is crushed by the school system because it encourages them to focus entirely on grades instead of learning and inquiry.  That is a negative consequence of our system to be sure, but kids that get straight As but are bored aren't the biggest trouble with the system.  The kids that can't cope with the structure and end up falling through the cracks are much more of a concern.

Still, the main point that grading takes over everything certainly stands.  We are stuck in a situation where parents and governments demand to have education measured.  It is extremely difficult to measure learning, so we rely on test scores as a stand in.  As is so often the case, we end up building the whole system to maximize our results on the metrics we made up, so we end up trying to raise test scores instead of trying to teach more effectively.

Some people will of course argue that we need test scores for university admissions.  There are schools that don't give marks and mature students that don't have standard marks and we make that work, so I don't think we need marks at all.  Still, if we had a bunch of tests for university admission at the end of grade 12 I would be fine with it.  However, numeric marks for younger kids is just a plague with no redeeming value.

We don't need to carefully rank children's learning.  We need to spend our time teaching them more, not working on giving them a number that isn't useful.

All this makes me not want to send Pinkie Pie to high school at all.  Sure, there are lots of things she will learn, but she will also spend way too much time grinding out pointless crap just so the high school can give her a number at the end.  I don't need any damn numbers, and neither does she.  She needs to learn, and to feel like the things she is doing are relevant.

Just like I did in high school, Pinkie Pie sees marks as pointless, and that will sour the entire experience.

Schools have been designed as a training ground for obedient cogs, setting them up to take their place in the machine.  Education is part of the mandate, but the structure is primarily designed to keep them under control and rigidly evaluated.  We are slowly changing this over time, and Ontario is gradually making progress, but it is at a glacial pace.

This shouldn't be taken as an attack on teachers - naturally, there are terrible teachers, but the vast majority I have encountered in my life or through Pinkie Pie have been dedicated to education and wished they could stop wasting so much time on standardized tests and marking.  Unfortunately when you work within the system, there is only so much you can do.

We need a huge rethink of what schools are for.  Unfortunately it will come too late for Pinkie Pie in any case, but if we want a society of creative problem solvers we need to stop spending their entire childhood telling them the thing we want from them is precise regurgitation of particular facts on one particular day.

I don't want a boss, employee, friend, or citizen to be ranked by their ability to score highly on a test, so let's remove that nonsense from our schools.

Am I a criminal?

Today I got in another altercation with religious zealots on the streetcorner.  It irritates me when they stand there handing out literature, but I don't do anything about that.  Today though they ratcheted up the annoyance by setting up a loudspeaker and blasting their "Repent you are going to hell" schtick at extremely high volume.  It was so loud that even in my condo 12 floors up and a block away it was unavoidable.  They had it going for a couple hours and I gradually got more and more angry.  Hundreds or maybe even thousands of people are spending their whole day listening to this pounding noise with its wretched message, and I am not okay with that.

This sort of thing is tricky to navigate because Wendy and I see it so differently.  She hates when religious folks make noise like this, but the idea of doing something about it directly leaves her anxious and upset.  I talked about going down there and yelling at the proselytizers, and this left her deeply worried.  I am sure it was partly social anxiety, but she was also worried one of them would shoot me or something.

I react in the opposite way.  I despise letting jerks crap all over everybody and not doing something out of fear.  I got more worked up as time went by and finally hit a point where I couldn't just sit anymore.  It was time to go get in a fight.

Before I arrived at the point of conflict though I had to make a decision.  Would I ask for change, or demand it?  Asking isn't going to get me in trouble, but it also won't do anything.  They will tell me that they are saving souls or some bullshit and keep on with their noise.  If I demand change though then I have to be ready to have my bluff called.  What do I do when they tell me to go to hell?

The fundamental question is this:  Am I willing to grab their loudspeaker and smash it to pieces if they refuse to turn it off?  Am I willing to commit a crime in order to get some jerks to stop polluting the public space?  Am I a vigilante?

I have to know the answer before I go in.  They don't necessarily know if I am bluffing, but I have to know.  I don't want a short stint in jail, but I also don't want to live in a society where we are so terrified of random assholes that we let them lower everyone else's quality of life.

Realistically of course if I grab a loudspeaker, smash it on the ground, and run, the chance of facing any consequences at all are remote.

I decided I was willing to take the risk.  I would prefer to do the smallest dollar amount of damage possible because that mitigates my risk so I would rely on angry yelling at first, and then would hope to steal their cables or something to render the loudspeaker inoperable.  If the loudspeaker needed smashing though, I was ready to smash it.

I stalked towards them, filled with rage, ready to create a tremendous scene, and realized that the noise had stopped.  A cop was standing beside the religious people talking to them, and had clearly made them turn off the loudspeaker.

I stalked up next to them, stood there staring death at the religious guy, and got a glance from the cop that said "Oh crap, another angry person to death with, maybe if I don't meet his gaze he will go away."  

I did not go away.

I waited a minute and then went on an angry rant about how everyone in their homes around here can hear this junk and have been putting up with it all afternoon.  The cop politely told me it was under control.

The level of tension dropped.  The cop went off to talk to another religous person and the leader and I started talking, but the stakes of this conversation were extremely low.  There is a cop 4 meters away.  We can yell at each other, but we both know neither of us is going to take a swing at the other.  Violence will not ensue.  If the cop hadn't been there though, the encounter might go entirely differently.  At that point we might be hesitant to threaten each other because the other person might actually turn to violence, so anyone escalating would have to worry about personal safety.  As it was though we were free to scream at each other knowing that it wouldn't go further than that.

So we screamed at each other.

Dude:  I *had* to make the volume super loud, because of the construction nearby.

Me:  You *chose* to make it so loud that it was a huge detriment to everyone within a block, this wasn't something that happened to you, this was you being an asshole.

Dude:  Hah!  I am trying to save you and bring you into the arms of Jesus.  What were you gonna do about it anyway?

Me:  If I hear that crap again, I am going to come down here, grab your loudspeaker, and chuck it into one of the construction holes where it will smash to pieces.

Dude:  You don't scare me, with all your big muscles! I was in prison! (Actual quote, I swear.) 

Me:  I am not trying to scare you, you moron.  I am *telling* you that if that speaker goes on again, I will destroy it.

Dude:  You are just made of meat, and you will stand before Jesus in judgement.

Me:  Really?  Are you going to threaten me with the wrath of Odin?  How about Zeus?  Or Nanabijou?  Maybe the Easter Bunny?  Your best friend invisible space wizard is a *myth*.

Dude:  You will go to hell!  Repent!

I didn't repent.

Thankfully, through some combination of serious legal threats from the police and threats of vigilante property destruction the loudspeaker has remained silent.  I feel so much better, sitting in my kitchen *not* hearing fire and brimstone coming from the streetcorner.

I should do this more often, it feels great.